0x1
Just beyond the ripped metal carcasses of Doors One and Two, Uzi was bleeding out. Oiling out? No, that sounds stupid. Leaking out? Whatever. The goth gave a soft laugh and a ghostly shake of her head, the electricity in her circuits jittering like last discharges.
Uzi was going to die, and it was her father’s fault, and he didn’t even have the spine to do it himself.
It felt like a lifetime ago — just a few hours — he was telling her how he’d killed her mother by his own hand. Did that mean he loved her more, or less?
Didn’t matter. Khan was supposed to protect her; instead, he left her to die.
And N, the murder drone, was supposed to kill her — so why was she still awake enough to listen? The worker had felt the metal blade drive into her abdomen. She’d seen him tear through the WDF — did he just miss her core?
Now she felt approaching scrapes and steps, his squad scurrying past Door One like scavengers scenting blood. She’d heard the two sickly sweet voices heaping never-before-spoken praise on N. (“Way to go, stud.” — Uzi wanted to wretch.)
And just as quickly, those fleeting accolades gave way to irritated complaints, but she had to piece together why. That voice muttering… It wasn’t the simpering corpo excuse for a leader that was swearing up a storm. *What had N called the extra savage one — B? V?
The murder drone had thought she could just crawl through the vents to reach the rest of the Outpost-3. Just how stupid did they think we were? Useless as Khan proved, he could do that right, at least.
Outpost-3 did not have such a glaring hole in its security; no, the murder drones were stuck in behind Door Three.
Did that mean Khan was right to leave me—
No. He had the time. All he had to do what point and shoot. Just because he didn’t fuck everything up, doesn’t excuse him! Don’t die doubting yourself, Uzi.
“Whatever. At least what’s-his-face managed to kill a couple workers. That’s something. I call dibs on this one.”
A hungry snarl and pegs scraping metal floor — wait, that’s right beside me, oh crap oh crap. Did she even have time to dodge? Where?
Then a clank of boots, the swish of metal swinging out like swords unsheathed.
Tick. Tick. Tick. And Uzi was stil online. Every joule of willpower she had left was dedicated to keeping her optics shut off, her screen blank. Don’t let them know I’m still alive. C’mon, Uzi, hold it together a little longer.
Uzi could almost picture it. N’s wings blocking V from pouncing on her. The look she’d gave him would be all fangs.
“Yo, what gives? Get out of the way.”
“But-but. This is, uh, my kill? I definitely drove my wing-blades in one end and out the other, don’t check that.”
A throat-clearing sound, a different voice. “N. You should be well-aware by now that quotas are calculated on a per-squad basis, not per unit. Credit goes to the squad and its management, and the resources are likewise for the squad. If it belongs to anyone, it’s mine.” A crack, one of those stilhetto-pegs shattering some stray piece of debris, grinding the shards just to add some loud punctuation. “But I’m generous enough to allocate resources on a first-come, first-serve basis.”
“In other words,” his other squadmate chimed in, “I called dibs, now get out of my way! I’m hungry.”
Hungrier than the guy who did all the actual work? Uzi thought. Wait, indiscriminate murder isn’t work. And I’m not a meal!
“But-but-but.” Two pairs of footsteps getting closer — one murder drones advancing, forcing N to back away, toward her. “I already licked it!”
The footsteps stop.
“Eww! Gross, nevermind. Did you lick the other toasters too?”
A pause. “Um, no?”
“Not a complete freak then, okay.”
Then the scrape of a rapid takeoff sounded, but this one wasn’t a pounce on Uzi. Quietly she swallowed, barely stopping herself from sighing relief. Hopefully no one noticed that subtle motion.
Now a thoughtful hum sounded, and a voice she was already sick of hearing. “Well then. If you’re so insistent on keeping this one for yourself, go on. Eat it.”
“Huh?”
“Is your hearing defective? Stop wasting my time and drink the oilcan you wanted so bad. Surely you’re hot after gunning your way in here?”
“Uh… yeah. She does look delicious, but…”
“But? She? Don’t tell me you’re projecting intelligence on that piece of scrap you stabbed. Have you forgotten what we’re here for?”
“I mean, yeah. It’s just. Well. She’s kind of pretty, y’know? I’d hate to ruin that. So maybe… I could keep her intact in the spire, somewhere?”
Uzi’s screen wasn’t lit, and she didn’t know what expression it’d show if it were. Would she rather be a meal or a toy? Neither!? What kind of question is that?
“We are disassembly drones. We disassemble. We’re here to purge corrupt AI, not to… oogle them. We do not collect toys. Unless… But you are still fit to pursue your primary directives. Right, N??”
Uzi’s core stopped, even her fans going still. Something dangerous dwelled in his leader’s tone — so why was he still talking?
“But… what if she’s not corrupt? She was making some good points back there! What is the company planning to do with us when we’re done disassemblying these maybe not-so-actually different from us drones? Are— are we next?”
Oh no. Uzi almost swore. N, you idiot.
A moment of silence. “Oh,” his leader said. “So you aren’t.”
That, finally, earned a reaction from N. If the awkward silent meant anything thing. Too bad I can’t see anything without giving myself away. He started to say something, but was interrupted.
Clank-swish. An impact-insertion echoed in the quiet metal halls. Grim like a gunshot.
“No, don’t worry, buddy. You just finally gave me the excuse—”
Crack was the sound of a murder drone’s takeoff at full-throttle. Wings and claws cut through air, pegs beating against the ground.
“J? What the hell?” said that other voice. The thwarted vent-crawler.
“Excuse me? V, stay out of this. Unless both of my squadmates have been corrupted?”
“You’re trying to kill N!”
“Lost your faith in the company already, V?”
“1-1-1t’5 0k4y, V. 1t’5 m-m-my b4d.” Already N’s voice had deteriorated to stuttering, square wave noise. What did his boss do to him? “Y0u r3m3m_83r3d my n4-n4me. H-h3h. Y-y-y0u’re 4w3s0m3. T-t-h4nk5 f0r l00k1ng 0ut f0r m3.”
Uzi listened, and she hoped. N had spoken so highly of this one — surely there was good in at least one other murder drone?
Nothing. Nothing! Uzi heard no reaction, no objection, no action.
Then a stomp. “Okay, boss,” she spat. “Do what you have to do.”
Crack was the sound of a murder drone’s takeoff. This time, back down the hall.
(N’d had a crush on this one, hadn’t he? And here she was, leaving him for dead. How familiar.)
“No. Get back here! I asked you a question, V. I expect an answer.”
Uzi couldn’t tell if V was anywhere near close enough to hear. But she could feel the crack of another takeoff.
Leaving Uzi and N there, two corpses going still.
Except N missed Uzi’s core. She was leaking out oil, but she’d been awake the whole time.
Still, there was no way back into Outpost-3 from here. No way to get herself to the repair bay. Even if she waited — even if the WDF ever thought it was safe to let her in with a murder drone lying right here — how could she even look Khan in the face without seeing those same hollow eyes that had flinched away from and shut a door in her face?
Uzi stood up, servos shaking. Bathed in red light, light wind sent purple locks dancing in front of her face, frigid air still crawling inward from a torn opening.
She lifted a foot, stepping forward — and stopped. A glance at the flickering light of the murder drone’s screen. It was blue with error, last messages flashing, then she glanced down at the virus-injector responsible.
Could she live with herself if she was just like Khan, just like V, willing choose mere survival even if it meant leaving a forsaken corpse behind her?
It felt like a lifetime ago Khan was telling her how he’d killed her mom with a wrench — the same wrench he’d given her.
And that virus injector was screwed into N’s chassis.
“Ugh. Just for the record, that was the lamest heel-face turn in history,” she said.
Where could they go from here? A girl locked out of her home. A monster discarded by his pack. A — what’s the trope? — forced proximity? Beauty and the beast?
What, were they supposed to run away together? Uzi couldn’t help blushing, but she rolled her eyes.
That was even lamer.
Distant stars, cloud-hazed, wheel above a frozen world. Metal crunched snow and silicon. A worker drone trudged through the quiet, and a murder drone stalked in tow, wings still.
If they flew out, it’d risk his teammated — former teammates — seeing them. Besides, Uzi wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to be carried by the hand that had so recently been black with her oil.
Uzi lead, because she’d walked icy streets in her quest to reach the corpse spire just hours ago. She’d seen which streets were blocked off, while N only got the bird’s eye view. He was looking around now, eyes and mouth wide as he took in the buildings looming above. Faint lights glowing in the fog.
“Your crew’s been here for years, right? Surely you’ve seen the city before?”
“Yeah, but mostly from up above. It all looks so small when you’re flying. And when I’m not flying I… have other things on my mind.”
“The cannibalism thing,” Uzi said. “Guess it’s strong enough to make your mood parser go haywire.”
N tilted his head in confusion.
Not a human gesture, and not something she’d seen back home, so it definitely wasn’t a body langauge preset. Murder drones had the whole snarly pouncy predator deal, so she wouldn’t put it past the parent company to splice in something animal — but why bother? In the end, Uzi could only wonder if it was a murder drone thing, or a N thing. She kind of hoped it was the latter. It was cute.;
“What do you mean?” he voiced the confusion, reminded her that conversion was not the time to get lost in thought.
Was she staring? Was that weird?
“Oh. I mean that murderface of yours looks like an error. Which adds to the spooky factor, admittedly. The mood parser is like… it’s the code that reads your neural net and figures out which animation to play on your screen.”
“Ah, like this?” N’s ovals blinked away, replayed by silly spirals.
“Not quite. It’s different when you do it on purpose. Most of the time it happens automatically, and— nevermind.” Uzi stopped herself. She could talk about the debugging function of the mood parser. You couldn’t turn it off, because humans wanted to be able to tell what their slaves were doing at a glance.
Uzi knew about it, because she wanted to hack it, disable it, something. Stop the blushing and the hollow eyes that let her bullies know when she get a reaction of her.
“You good, dude? You could keep explaining if you want.”
Uzi looked away. Blew some air out of her mouth. “You don’t have to humor me. I know it’s boring.”
“I don’t think so? Or maybe you’re just good at explaining things. I like listening to you.”
Purple lines under her eyes betrayed her. “You mean that?”
“Of course.”
“…Thanks.” That’s the right thing to say when someone’s nice you, right? Not a lot of experience to go off of. “But uh… Can we talk about something else? It’s…”
“That’s fine! No pressure.” He smiled.
As they walk through the snow, Uzi makes a snowball and pelts N with it, and before long there laughing and playing in the snow.
It lasts until one snowball hits Uzi in the chest by her core, then the water drips down under her shirt. She hisses from the droplets slipping into the wound N’s wings l, a different voiceeft.
N rushes over, expression all concern. “Uzi? You’re hurt? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” She tries to wave him off.
“Can I see?”
“Don’t be weird. I can repair it myself, just gotta find the right supplies. Also— gotcha!” Uzi flings an arm forward, catching N off-guard with a snowball right to the face.
A small laugh, but he can’t keep a note of concern out of his voice. Hopefully they find the supplies soon.
It’s not long after that when the fun is interrupted by the rising sun. N panics, and they scramble to find shade. N grabs Uzi and flies to the nearest landmark, easily seen as a huge, multistory complex with a big lot sprawled around it.
Before they step into the building, Uzi pauses. She looks to N, then looks to the ground. “Thanks for saving me, but… you don’t have to stick around, you know. Now that we’ve gotten out of there, you could probably fly faster on your own. Without me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Why would you stick around? With me?”
“Because… I dunno. I like being around you. You’re cool.”
“You’d be the first to think so. I’m… I kinda messed up. I’m weird and a loner and nobody really gets me. You’re a murder drone, and you’re so…” — she tried to a find a word that didn’t sound embarrassing. Not sweet, not charming, definitely not handsome — “…funny.”
“Well, you’re a bit opaque, but I like that. It’s all mysterious. Kinda exciting? Is that a weird thing to say? Forget I said that, haha.” N covered his mouth, then tried to shrug it off and continue. “You know, I messed everything up too. Murdered a bunch of drones, made things awkward with your dad… Look at this way, you can’t be a loner if we’re together, right? What do you say. Friends?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
So they stow away inside, together. N finds a perch to sleep under. And Uzi, having woken up early then spent the rest of the night/morning on the run, she barely has time to find some old batteries before she’s out like a light too.
She gets woken up by gunshots.
Workers drones, scavengers, had seen N roosting out in the open, set up a fortied position, and opened fire. It’s enough damage to send N crashing to the ground, and the bullets keep coming. Before he goes offline, Uzi rushes forward — foolish, maybe, but she’s only half-online.
The workers pause, confused at the sight of another worker. It gives time enough for Uzi to yell at them to stop, as she runs to N’s side to help him up. The workers are shouting a warning — but N doesn’t attack.
An argument proceeds, but Uzi’s case for N’s civility is easy to make, standing next to him as he pokes his fingers together.
Then one of the worker mutters something like: Nori, that’s her’s name. Uzi jolts at mention of her mom’s name. The worker who said it was an older female, hair worn thin from the years. She holds a pillbaby in her arms. She explains that she recognizes the hair, the attitude.
Uzi, of course, is curious about her mother, demanding to know more. There are stories of her from back before Outpost-3 was founded, back when the WDF did missions in the wasteland. The woman couldn’t tell you many of them — she’d only met Nori once, years ago.
(Throughout the conversation, the pillbaby watches Uzi and N with piercing blue eyes. “Creepy kid,” Uzi comments. Only for the blue eyes to narrow in offense. The woman explains that she’s old enough to be uploaded into a new body. It’s one of the things they were hoping to find out here. It’d be… wrong, to put her in someone’s dead body. But with technician-drones being so hard to come by, and so many factors are in ruins, she’s been stuck like this, terribly precocious, for years. Uzi nods, it sucks, but she has other things to worry about, really.)
Uzi asks who can tell her all the stories. There’s a settlement the scavengers are from, a place they go to sell the scrap they find. Outpost-11. But before the old woman can give directions, the drone that fired the first shot interrupts.
Maybe this one is tame for now, they say, but we are absolutely not revealing the location of their secret outpost to a murder drone. 11 didn’t have a Khan — their only security was obscurity.
Uzi insists, whines, begs, but the drone refuses to budge, or allow anyone else to budge. So Uzi says fine. N waves goodbye, says it was nice meeting you all, and Uzi lightly punches him. No being nice to the secret-keeping jerks.
The place N had chosen to hide from the sun is an old abandoned mall, so the pair of them start exploring the old store fronts. After she finds some electrical tape to patch herself up with, Uzi wants parts to upgrade her gun, build a replacement laptop, and do other cool hacky tech stuff.
N splits off to grab plushies and toys to give her as gifts. It’s enough to make Uzi blush, murmur a thanks. She doesn’t have anything to give him back, but he’s overjoyed that she likes the plush.
(While exploring the mall further, there’s a collapsed section, rickety enough Uzi nearly falls. N catches her, and holds her hand so she doesn’t fall. When they reach steady ground, she doesn’t let go of his hand.)
Once Uzi finds some batteries and cleaning fluid, they have a dinner together in the food court. Not a date, by the way.
“So, what are we doing next?”
Uzi gives a devious smirk. “We’re going hunting.”
N’s confused, so she explains. “If those scavengers won’t tell us where their hideout is, we’ll just have to follow them there.”
“That seems a bit… if they don’t want us there, maybe we shouldn’t intrude?”
“They don’t want us there cuz they think you’re gonna kill them all. Which you won’t, right?”
“Of course not! No murder thing.”
“Then they don’t have a real reason and they’re being stupid.” Uzi deserved to know about her mom. N concedes that sort of makes sense.
They find where the scavengers have made a camp inside the mall. Being diurnal for obvious survival reasons, they’ll sleep through the night then brave the world outside once the sunrise. Uzi peeks from a distance, and notices they always have one worker standing guard.
So N and Uzi return to exploring the mall. When it comes to the stuff Uzi’s looking for, the mall’s been picked near-clean over the years, but it’s a derelict, collapsing building. In places, massive slabs of concrete and steel have buckled, cutting off access to entire chambers.
Massive slabs which N is quite capable of lifting, letting them access riches no other worker could find. There, Uzi finds an old JcJenson depot with uninitialized drone shells. Perfect for a trained neural network to be uploaded into into. Jackpot.
Uzi opens up the frame and fiddles with the internals. Then she asks N to carry it back to the scavengers. Uzi offers it to them for nothing in return. The scavengers insist on trading, do they need guns? Magnets? Tape? Uzi brushes it off. What would she do with an initialized drone shell? It’s worthless to her.
The piercing blue eyes watch her all the while. Even as the the adults thank her for her generosity, it seemed the beneficiary held the most skepticism.